Copley Exec Discusses Neil Morgan Firing

By: Dave Astor A Copley Press executive, while not explaining why The San Diego Union-Tribune fired Neil Morgan after 54 years, said it wasn't because of pressure from influential people.

Morgan had wondered in an E&P interview last week if advertiser and politician complaints about his column might have been a reason why he was let go.

Harold W. Fuson Jr., vice president and chief legal officer of Copley Press, said in an e-mail to E&P: "The San Diego Union-Tribune takes heat every day from its readers, many of whom are advertisers and politicians. You can ask the newspaper's Readers' Representative for her daily tallies. I can say for certain that no such heat figured in the decision that it was time, after more than half a century, for the Neil Morgan column to come down from its roost."

So why was Morgan fired? "As you know, employers are constrained in what they can say about matters involving employee disputes," said Fuson.

"I'm glad to learn from Hal that influential advertisers and politicians didn't fire me," said Morgan. "Some of them were busy taking credit for it." He added: "Hal didn't fire me; he wouldn't have botched it so bad."

Fuson also said there were two versions of Morgan's final, unpublished column -- from which E&P ran excerpts. "It appears that a version of Mr. Morgan's last column has been misrepresented to you as the column that the newspaper refused to publish," Fuson told E&P in his e-mail. "The version of the column Mr. Morgan submitted to the newspaper is substantially different than the one you appear to have and that has appeared elsewhere under Mr. Morgan's imprimatur."

Morgan responded: "Hal's back-up lawyer must have forgot to tell him he worked at newspaper deadline time with my lawyer, Milt Silverman, and me. We all wanted to soften up two spots so the column wouldn't be killed and stir up the readers again. Our changes were both in Hal's favor. I hurried back to the newsroom to ask my editor, Ellen Bevier, if the fixes worked for her. She shook her head. That deal, she said, blew up when
Milt and I decided we'd better call a press conference. What interests me here is how editors draw a story line between news and newsroom dissent."

Morgan also was associate editor of the Union-Tribune until his firing last week, and served as editor of the San Diego Tribune from 1981 to 1992.